I am a high school student who has recently begun working with GTD (I'm currently working with iGTD while waiting for my OmniFocus alpha invite). Regardless of what you may think, I [I]do[/I] have a lot of things to manage in my life outside of schoolwork. In the past I have used the OS X homework application "Schoolhouse" to manage my homework, tests, and school projects, which almost always rely on solid deadlines (if I don't complete tasks by their deadline, I usually cannot complete them later) However, the application is very limiting towards encompassing other aspects of my life. Does anyone have any advice, ideas, or experiences that they could share on using the Getting Things Done system--and OmniFocus specifically--for managing very solid deadlines, and lots of them (i.e. 2-5 new projects every day, and up to a couple dozen tasks, just for the schoolwork). I understand that David Allen's book talks about this, but I'm still waiting for it to arrive from Amazon.

Lutin

2007-07-30 09:02 AM

[QUOTE=dhm2006]David Allen suggests that "very solid deadlines" be placed on a calendar and that the calendar be reserved solely for those things.[/QUOTE]

I do not agree with this interpretation. But I might be plain wrong.
I think he only suggests that you write day or time specific actions to your calendar, and every other actions to your trusted-system.

For a student, that would translate as:
- write the deadline in the calendar, to serve as a reminder
- write the actions that will constitute the project in the GTD system chosen.

To have solid deadlines doesn't change the fact that at one time, you need to know what is your next action and what you have the possibility to do (given context, energy, time...).

GeekLady

2007-07-30 10:47 AM

I would continue to use Schoolhouse for managing the details of your schoolwork, especially if it works well for you and you're used to it. In my opinion, schoolwork requires so much hard landscape AND semisolid state tasks (not to mention metadata), that having an application dedicated to managing it all is a Godsend.

You can always integrate OF in your GTD system without it actually holding all of your schoolwork, it will just give you one more bucket to check. This has it's advantages and disadvantages, but it's up to you to decide what works.

Also, if you're in the sciences, a femto gram is 1x10^-15 of a gram, and don't you forget it!

sprugman

2007-07-30 02:17 PM

[QUOTE]Also, if you're in the sciences, a femto gram is 1x10^-15 of a gram, and don't you forget it![/QUOTE]

GeekLady, are you flirting with the high school students again?

omerzach

2007-08-01 12:49 AM

Thanks for the input; I think that I probably will continue working with Schoolhouse and a GTD program, but only using GTD to handle the more sophisticated school tasks like projects or studying for big tests. Otherwise, it seems inconvenient to put in each small, single homework assignment such as math problems into two programs.

GeekLady

2007-08-01 09:00 AM

Absolutely not, I'm a happily married woman. I just strongly disapprove of science students that don't know what a femtogram is by the time they're in medical school.

[QUOTE=sprugman;18442]GeekLady, are you flirting with the high school students again?[/QUOTE]

GeekLady

2007-08-01 09:03 AM

Well, I didn't mean that you should enter all your homework information into two progams, but that you could set up a daily repeating task of completing the things you need to do that day in Schoolhouse. That way OF will send you to Schoolhouse every day.

[QUOTE=omerzach;18527]Thanks for the input; I think that I probably will continue working with Schoolhouse and a GTD program, but only using GTD to handle the more sophisticated school tasks like projects or studying for big tests. Otherwise, it seems inconvenient to put in each small, single homework assignment such as math problems into two programs.[/QUOTE]